Abdul Rashid Dostum

Abdul Rashid Dostum (born 1954) is a General of the Afghan National Army's Afghan 6th Corps. He led Northern Alliance forces in the 1990s and was the leader of two of the major factions; he allied with the fellow faction leader Ahmad Shah Massoud against the Taliban.

Biography
Abdul Rashid Dostum was born in Khvajeh Do Kuh in Jowzjan Province of Afghanistan to a Muslim Uzbek family. In the 1980s he fought in the Afghan Army against the Mujahideen rebels, but after the Soviet Union-backed government ended in 1992 when the Mujahideen captured Kabul, he became a politician in the new government.

He fought for the Northern Alliance resistance against the extremist Taliban who took over in 1996 as one of two major commanders; the other was Ahmad Shah Massoud. Dostum led the northwestern opposition, Massoud the northeastern; the two allied with each other against Mullah Mohammed Omar's Taliban in the rest of the country.

After the Northern Alliance captured Kabul in 2001 with assistance from ISAF, Dostum returned to politics and became the commander of the Afghan National Army (ANA) Afghan 6th Corps.